And so I liked putting that in there so that the work could open up. We're this infinitesimally small item in this vast universe. When I was doing some of the Guggenheim work, which was called Euclidean Gris Gris, that work opened up the possibility of hubris. So that's when I thought, “I'm going to use this image of the cosmos,” because what it also does, it signifies different things for me, as the work is developed. I was putting those together, and it was so direct - the logic was so strong, I felt that I needed to open the work up so that there would be more possibilities. TODD: After I received my Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018 to photograph European imperial gardens, where the owners enrich themselves through the slave trade or their colonization of Africa, and then combined those with images of African landscape and African people. What comes first? A concept or photographs from your archive? TERRENCE: Your photo assemblages engage with themes of colonialism, slavery and the African diaspora. It was a critique, saying, yeah, there is infinite possibility. We live in this universe that has infinite possibility, yet how is it that it's still contained? That was my way of inferring that it's systemic - it's an illusion that it's equal, that there's infinite possibility. Because for me, it was a way to say, hey, you know, there's infinite possibility, but look at the least amount of options that Black people have. And I would use celestial images with them. I was using images of gangsters and gangbangers that I had photographed on the “Beat It” video. And that's when I decided to start using references of the galaxy and things like that. So I thought, well, Sun Ra came from Saturn, maybe Michael’s celestial too because of his gifts. And that made me think of Sun Ra who always said he came from Saturn as a way to exorcise the trauma of Jim Crow and the racist violence that he witnessed and was subject to. And I thought, he's not from this planet. I thought about Michael’s immense creativity and genius. So I decided to go against the grain and just break all these rules. TODD: I decided to question everything that I thought was a norm in photography. TERRENCE: How did you implement what you read from Stuart Hall into your photographic practice? And normativity basically is a way that hegemony maintains order and maintains your subject-hood. And basically, that's from reading Stuart Hall, which is to always question normativity. And that's how the current work came about, where I'm putting photographs on top of photographs. So I started combining my archive that I made there with my archive of Michael. My wife and I had a home in Ghana since 2006 or 2007. But position him in the African diaspora. I don't even have to say that, the most identifiable man in the world period. After reading Stuart Hall, I decided to jump back in and position the work and use the most identifiable Black man in the world, which is Michael Jackson. TODD: Thank you - turned me on to Stuart Hall. And then 10 or so years ago I was in conversation with a couple of artists and they turned me on to the Jamaican theorist from London. I realize that the commercial work I've done is culture also. So that was the first time I actually looked at my archive as having value that I could go and extract and make art from and create meaning that's outside of the mercantile. Allan just said I needed to dive into my Jackson archive and do something on race, class, gender, and do a project. They happened to find out or mention that I was Michael Jackson's personal photographer, like, a few years past. TODD: Cathy Opie and Lyle Ashton Harris were in my class. I remember the essay: “The Body and The Archive.” ![]() ![]() As you know, Allan Sekula’s practice is based on the archive. By simply giving me a reading list with Fanon, Foucault, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, bell hooks and on and on. I mean, Allan Sekula turned me on to my Blackness and turned me on to the fact that I had a colonized mind. ![]() So I went to grad school and studied with Allan Sekula. ![]() So I could bank up, not have to work for a month or six weeks or something, work on something, and then get on the phone and get jobs again. I would do commercial work so I could buy time for myself to do my own work. When I was in high school I shot my first album cover. TODD GRAY: So I was already shooting album covers and musicians before I went to CalArts. TERRENCE PHEARSE: How did your early commercial work lead to the work you make today?
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